The present invention relates to power converters, and more particularly to power converters using near-load output capacitance, direct inductor contact, and/or remote current sense.
This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention disclosed below. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived, implemented or described. Therefore, unless otherwise explicitly indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section. Abbreviations that may be found in the specification and/or the drawing figures are defined below, after the detailed description section.
Modern electronics depend enormously on compact and efficient power converters. These so-called DC-DC (direct current to direct current) devices typically convert a higher voltage (for example 12V for a computer running from AC power using a 12V output power supply) to a lower voltage (for example 0.8V for a modern microprocessor). These DC-DC converters, also called DC-DC regulators, are manufactured and sold by a wide number of companies. They are used in cars, cellphones, computers, and are part of nearly every electronic device. With today's emphasis on low power consumption, these power converters are themselves being redesigned for improved conversion efficiency, or the ratio of the product of the output voltage and output current, to the product of the input voltage and input current. See the following equation, for instance:DC-DC efficiency=(Vout*Iout)/(Vin*Iin),where Voutand Iout are output voltage and current, respectively, of a DC-DC converter, and Vin and Iin are input voltage and current, respectively, of the DC-DC converter.
Modern power converters are now over 90% (percent) efficient. Even with this high level of efficiency, these can be improved.